Multilayered Nb-Al composite manufactured by explosive welding

In this study, the multilayered composite materials consisting of niobium and aluminum foils were produced by explosive welding. The conducted microstructural studies with the use of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) have shown that the boundaries of welded seams have predominantly a wave structure with a partial local melting of interacting materials. At the niobium/aluminum boundary, in the mixing zones, micro volumes with a non-uniform chemical composition were presented. Mechanical tests have shown that the strength properties, as well as the toughness of composite materials, are at an intermediate level relative to the initial materials

Using Cloud Computing in Financial Institutions in Russia

The modern economy is developing under the influence of information and communication technologies. Cloud computing, Big Data, cyberphysical systems, here is an incomplete list of new directions, which with huge success is seen in every sphere of management and economy. This chapter deals with innovative ways of development connected with the use of cloud computing in the financial sphere. The history of occurrence and the basic preconditions in the development of cloud technology are analyzed. The major stages of the adoption of cloud computing in world development are considered. The main characteristics of cloud computing are explored: the types of clouds and methods of their provision are presented. The analysis of the Russian cloud technology market is carried out, the basic features and tendencies are revealed, and the further ways of development are defined. The evaluation of the possibility of using cloud computing in the financial institutions of the Russian Federation is given

ДИАГНОСТИКА СИСТЕМЫ УПРАВЛЕНИЯ РЕГИОНАЛЬНЫМ ЗДРАВООХРАНЕНИЕМ В РОССИИ НА ОСНОВЕ МОДЕЛИРОВАНИЯ И ПРОГНОЗИРОВАНИЯ МЕДИКО-ДЕМОГРАФИЧЕСКИХ ПОКАЗАТЕЛЕЙ

Background: Justification of the study direction of public health improving is quite general. But the identification of the most effective indicators of the healthcare system improvement remains unexplored. Objective: Our aim was to determine the interaction between the basic demographic indicators of the region (Smolensk region) and efficacy endpoints of the Healthcare management identified in the study. Methods: The study reviewed the demographic changes of the Smolensk region at present and the forecast for 2015, 2016, 2017. The forecast of demographic and health indicators was based on exponential smoothing models and autoregressive model. Results: The study identified the most appropriate medical and demographic indicators. 1) The ratio of physicians (per 10,000 people in population, the rate maximum was 62 in 2004, in 2015 this figure has fallen to 52, and it is supposed to decrease to 49 by 2017). 2) The overall mortality rate (per 1000 people in population). Reduction of the resident population of the Smolensk region is 8.2 thousand people in annual average. This fact shows a stable depopulation of the region. 3) The average load on the ambulance. It has been found that the increase and decrease of these parameters directly affect the population rate. Conclusion: The study revealed a stable downtrend of average resident population number which confirms the long regional depopulation. It is associated in particular with the lack of stimulation of the health and demographic indicators’ increase including but not limited to inefficient healthcare management arrangements. Направление совершенствования здравоохранения имеет довольно общий характер. Неизученным остается выявление наиболее эффективных показателей улучшения системы здравоохранения. Цель исследования: установить взаимосвязь основных демографических показателей региона (Смоленской обл.) с выявленными в ходе исследования показателями эффективности управления здравоохранения. Методы: в исследование включали изменение демографического положения Смоленской обл. в настоящее время и его прогноз на 2015, 2016, 2017 г. Был произведен прогноз медико-демографических показателей на основе модели экспоненциального сглаживания и авторегрессионной модели. Результаты: в ходе исследования выявлены наиболее целесообразные медико-демографические показатели. 1) Обеспеченность врачами (на 10 тыс. чел. населения, показатель имел максимальное значение в 2004 г. и составил 62; на 2015 г. данный показатель снизился до 52; прогнозируется его снижение к 2017 г. до 49). 2) Общая смертность (на 1000 чел. населения). Сокращение численности постоянного населения Смоленской обл. в среднегодовом выражении составляет 8,2 тыс. чел. Это свидетельствует об устойчивой депопуляции населения региона. 3) Средняя нагрузка на бригаду скорой помощи. Установлено, что увеличение и уменьшение данных показателей непосредственно влияет на численность населения. Заключение: в ходе исследования установлена устойчивая нисходящая тенденция среднегодовой численности постоянного населения, что подтверждает продолжительную региональную депопуляцию населения, что связано, в т.ч. и с неэффективной организацией управления здравоохранением, а, в частности, с недостаточным стимулированием роста медико-демографических показателей.

Text-only domain adaptation for end-to-end ASR using integrated text-to-mel-spectrogram generator

We propose an end-to-end Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) system that can be trained on transcribed speech data, text-only data, or a mixture of both. The proposed model uses an integrated auxiliary block for text-based training. This block combines a non-autoregressive multi-speaker text-to-mel-spectrogram generator with a GAN-based enhancer to improve the spectrogram quality. The proposed system can generate a mel-spectrogram dynamically during training. It can be used to adapt the ASR model to a new domain by using text-only data from this domain. We demonstrate that the proposed training method significantly improves ASR accuracy compared to the system trained on transcribed speech only. It also surpasses cascade TTS systems with the vocoder in the adaptation quality and training speed.Comment: Accepted to INTERSPEECH 202

Exploration of End-to-End ASR for OpenSTT -- Russian Open Speech-to-Text Dataset

This paper presents an exploration of end-to-end automatic speech recognition systems (ASR) for the largest open-source Russian language data set -- OpenSTT. We evaluate different existing end-to-end approaches such as joint CTC/Attention, RNN-Transducer, and Transformer. All of them are compared with the strong hybrid ASR system based on LF-MMI TDNN-F acoustic model. For the three available validation sets (phone calls, YouTube, and books), our best end-to-end model achieves word error rate (WER) of 34.8%, 19.1%, and 18.1%, respectively. Under the same conditions, the hybridASR system demonstrates 33.5%, 20.9%, and 18.6% WER.Comment: Accepted by SPECOM 202

Effect of Original Layer Thicknesses on the Interface Bonding and Mechanical Properties of Ti-Al Laminate Composites

It is of great significance in high-temperature aeroengine applications for large-surface-area TiAl laminate composites to be fabricated into Ti-Al3Ti parts by plastic forming and subsequent vacuum hot pressing. Then the original layer thicknesses have an important influence on the interface bonding and mechanical properties of TiAl laminate composites, but only few reports about it have been published so far. In the present study, vacuum hot pressing was employed to fabricate TiAl laminate composites using Ti and Al foils of different thickness. The resulting interface bond and mechanical properties of TiAl laminate composites were then studied to determine the optimum sheet configuration and thickness. To further assess their formability and develop a forming limit diagram (FLD), 0.1/0.15 TiAl laminate composites were operated on bending and forming tests to provide guidance for subsequent plastic forming of complex geometries. The results indicated that hot pressed laminates composed of alternating 0.1 (Al) and 0.15 (Ti) mm thick sheets exhibited enhanced superior interface bonding and mechanical properties compared with 0.2/0.25 and 0.4/0.4 sheets. The 0.1/0.15 TiAl laminate composites had excellent bending characteristics and reasonable formability. Fabrication of a drawn cup further confirms the potential for hot pressed TiAl laminate composites to be fabricated into complex shapes

Laparoscopic herniorrhaphy in children.

The authors report their experience in laparoscopic repair of inguinal hernias in children. From May 2010 to November 2013, 122 patients with inguinal hernia underwent laparoscopic herniorrhaphy (92 males and 30 females). Telescope used was 5 mm, while trocars for the operative instruments were 3 or 2 mm. After introducing the camera at the umbilical level and trocars in triangulation, a 4-0 nonabsorbable monofilament suture was inserted directly through the abdominal wall. The internal inguinal ring was then closed by N or double N suture. All operations were performed in one-day surgery setting. In the case of association of inguinal and umbilical hernia an original technique was performed for positioning and fixing the umbilical trocar and for the primary closure of the abdominal wall defect. The postoperative follow-up consisted of outpatient visits at 1 week and 1, 3, and 6 months. The mean age of patients was 38.5 months. Of all patients, 26 were also suffering from umbilical hernia (19 males and 7 females). A total of 160 herniorrhaphies were performed; 84 were unilateral (66 inguinal hernia, 18 inguinal hernia associated with umbilical hernia), 38 bilateral (30 inguinal hernia, 8 inguinal hernia associated with umbilical hernia). Nine of 122 patients (6 males and 3 females) were operated in emergency for incarcerated hernia. A pre-operative diagnosis of unilateral inguinal hernia was performed in 106 cases. Of these patients, laparoscopy revealed a controlateral open internal inguinal ring in 22 cases (20.7%). The mean operative time was 29.9±15.9 min for the monolateral herniorrhaphies, while in case of bilateral repair the mean operative time was 41.5±10.4 min. The mean operative time for the repair of unilateral inguinal hernia associated with umbilical hernia was 30.1±7.4 while for the correction of bilateral inguinal hernia associated with umbilical hernia 39.5±10.6 min. There were 3 recurrences (1.8%): 2 cases in unilateral repair and 1 case a unilateral recurrence in a bilateral repair. No other complications were seen. Laparoscopic repair of inguinal hernia in children performed in this experience resulted a safe and effective procedure